Jews and The Blues

In the year of 1969, I was a budding high school blues musician and me and my other blues loving buddies ventured down Cedar Hill to Cleveland’s remarkable club LaCave at 105^th and Euclid to see a band called the Chicago All Stars perform. They consisted of elder statesmen of the blues Willie Dixon, Walter “Shakey” Horton, Johnny Shines, Sunnyland Slim and Clifton James, all “real deal” black Chicago bluesmen. After the show, I hung out with them in the dressing room along with famed Cleveland “underground radio” DJ, Doc Nemo. Fast forward over 35 years to circa 2007 as I, now ripely in my 50’s headed down to BB King’s club in Times Square, NYC to see a band called the Chicago Blues Reunion perform. Unlike the group in the 60’s, most of whom had since passed away, the elder statesmen were mostly white and mostly Jewish. Corky Siegel, Harvey Mandel, Barry Goldberg, “honorary Jew” Nick Gravenites, and the gentiles Gary Mallabar, and Rick Reed. They were joined by Jewish keyboard man Mark Naftalin as well as the original surviving black blues drummer Sammy Lay.[1]

This phenomenon caused me to reflect on how strange it seemed that back in the 60’s and 70’s when my baby boom generation went to see blues concerts, it was the original black performers from all of the original blues areas in the Mississippi delta, Louisiana, Texas and Eastern seaboard up to Chicago, and now that they’re all gone, the grizzled old veterans of the blues are white guys based in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and other large cities. As previously cited, a disproportionate number happen to be Jewish. I wondered why this was the case, including looking inward at my own Jewish self and that of my best musician friends from a predominantly Jewish high school in a Cleveland suburb.

First of all, a roll call of some of the blues musicians and those in the music industry who were “instrumental” in facilitating their careers via managing, promoting, writing about, owning record companies that specialized in blues, etc. The following is a brief description of each, but in no way a representation of their comprehensive contributions.

Michael Bloomfield – Virtuoso and influential guitarist in numerous settings including session work with Bob Dylan, the Electric Flag, Super Session and various live concerts at the Fillmore.

Harvey Mandel – A highly innovative guitarist with a string of original solo albums and stints with Canned Heat, the Pure Food & Drug Act, John Mayall, Charlie Musselwhite, the Rolling Stones and the Chicago Blues Reunion.

Mark Naftalin – Keyboard player with the original Paul Butterfield blues band

Barry Goldberg – Keyboard player with Charley Musselwhite and the Electric Flag, the Chicago Blues Reunion, The Rides, and extensive studio and production work.

Harvey Brooks – Bassist with the Electric Flag, Super Session, Miles Davis, and extensive studio work with Dylan, the Doors and many others.

Danny Kalb – Guitarist, singer with the Blues Project, Sea Train, Dave Van Ronk’s Jug Band, solo artist, and with guitarist Stefan Grossman on their Crosscurrents album.

Al Kooper – Keyboard and guitar player, singer with the Blues Project, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Super Session, Dylan, numerous solo albums and promotion of other lesser-known musicians, sessions with Hendrix, the Rolling Stones and many others.

Andy Kulberg – Bassist and flutist with the Blues Project and Seatrain.

Steve Katz – Guitarist, singer and harp player with the Even Dozen Jug Band, the Blues Project, Blood, Sweat & Tears, solo projects and noted producer.

Roy Blumenfeld – Drummer with the Blues Project.

Bob Dylan – Early white blues revival stylist on guitar, harp and piano and one of the greatest songwriters and poets in history.

Corky Siegel – Harp player,  pianist & singer with the Siegel-Schwall Band, the Chicago Blues Reunion and Chamber Blues.

Stefan Grossman – Acoustic guitarist, singer, educator with many solo albums, duet projects with John Renbourn, Danny Kalb, and former member of the Even Dozen Jug Band and instructional videos and books. Also founded Shanache Records.

Rory Block – Acoustic guitarist, singer, educator

Shelly Plotkin – Drummer in the Siegel-Schwall Band

David Bromberg – Multi-instrumentalist, singer, solo career as well as sideman with Dylan, Jerry Jeff Walker and others.

Jorma Kaukonen – Guitarist, singer with the Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, solo career and educator with a guitar school in Ohio.

David Getz – Drummer in Big Brother and the Holding Company

Joe McDonald, Gary “Chicken” Hirsh, Barry Melton, and David Bennett Cohen – Members of Country Joe and the Fish. Not strictly a blues band, but very blues-based.

David Freiberg – Bassist in Quicksilver Messenger Service

Happy & Artie Traum – Guitar playing brothers and educators. Performers as sidemen and solo careers.

Peter Green – Guitarist with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, guitar and vocals with Fleetwood Mac, Splinter Group, albums with Otis Spann and others and solo albums.

Frank Cook – Drummer for Canned Heat and Pacific Gas & Electric.

Jeffrey Carp – Harp player with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and others.

Paul Oscher – Harp player and guitarist also with Muddy Waters as well numerous other bluesmen.

Larry Taylor – Bassist with John Mayall, Canned Heat, and numerous studio sessions.

Bob Brozman – Acoustic guitarist

Bob Margolin – Guitarist with Muddy Waters

Bernie Roth – Songwriter for Chess Records and Muddy Waters

Jerry Silverman – Guitarist and prolific author of many guitar methods books on blues

Arlo Guthrie – Singer/songwriter who also performed blues covers of people like Mississippi John Hurt.

Peter Wolf, Seth Justman, Danny Klein, Richard Salwitz (Magic Dick) – All members of the J. Geils band, originally known as the J. Geils Blues Band

Zal Yanofsky – Guitarist for the Lovin’ Spoonful who played some blues numbers.

Bill Graham – Presented many blues acts at his Fillmores East and West.

Mo Asch – His Folkways Record label recorded many blues artists

Maynard Solomon – Musicologist and creator of Vanguard Records that recorded many blues artists

Jerry Wexler – Producer of many blues and R&B artists for Atlantic Records

Dick Waterman – Musicologist, journalist, promoter of blues artists, founder of Avalon Productions and advocate for families of blues musicians.

Harold Courlander – Anthropologist, musicologist, author of books on the blues

Nick Perls – Founder of Yazoo Records that recorded many blues artists

Bruce Iglauer – Founder of blues record label Alligator Records

Ken Goldstein – Folklorist, record producer for Prestige

Arnold Caplin – Founder of blues record label Biograph Records

Albert Grossman – Manager of Dylan, John Lee Hooker, Janis Joplin and many others.

Phil and Leonard Chess – Founders and operators of Chess Records in Chicago that was the most important label for Chicago blues artists.

Sid Seidenberg – Manager of B.B. King and other blues and R&B artists

John Fishel – One of the organizers of the monumental Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Ed Pearl – Founder of the Ash Grove music venue in LA that presented a plethora of blues artists and whose nephew, Randy “California” Wolfe was as great blues guitarist with the band Spirit.

Izzy Young – Owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village that featured important acoustic blues, folk and rock artists.

Irwin Silber – Editor of Sing Out! Magazine.

Elijah Wald – Author of a number of books on blues

Henrietta Yurchenco – Noted pioneering folklorist and radio show host.

These are just a few of the internationally well-known folks. In pretty much every town in the USA, there are blues bands chock full of Jews. Back in my hometown of Cleveland, many of the local blues musicians were Jewish, and I’ve found the same to be true for local bands in Indianapolis, LA, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta and so on.

Many Jews were important musicians, producers, record company owners, managers, etc. in other fields such as rock, folk, bluegrass, Latin and jazz. The list, just off the top of any music fan’s head is dizzying: Leonard Cohen, Donald Fagen, Phil Ochs, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, David Blue, Mark Knopfler, Bill Kreutzmann, Janis Ian, Laura Nyro, Dorothy Moskowitz, Carly Simon, Manfred Mann, Fred Hellerman, Ronnie Gilbert, Mark Vollman & Howard Kaylan of the Turtles, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Leslie West, David Lee Roth, Neal Schulman, Cass Elliot, John Cohen, members of the Ramones, Larry Harlow, nearly the entire Brill Building crew like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Neil Diamond, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, Doc Pomus, Lieber and Stoller, Don Kirshner, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, most of the composers of the “great American songbook” and Broadway shows, television and movies, Herb Alpert, Jerry Moss, David Geffen, Billy Joel, Chris Stein, Mark Stein, Mark Tulin, Gene Simmons, Peter Yarrow, Graham Gouldman, Brian Epstein!!!, Marc Bolan, Robbie Robertson, Max Weinberg, Lou Reed, Randy Newman, Rick Rubin, Carly Simon, Phil Ochs, Mike Stern, Mike and Randy Brecker, Bob Berg, Steve Grossman, Adam Holtzman, Red Rodney, Bill DeArango, Mezz Mezzrow, Symphony Sid, Lee Konitz, Stan Getz, Shelly Mann, Herbie Mann, Buddy Rich, Norman Grantz, Alfred Lion, George Wein, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jane Ira Bloom, Janis Siegel, Flora Purim, Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, Max Gordon, Howard Mandel, Ira Gittler, Barry Ulanov, etc., etc., etc.

Once I advertised for a conga player to overdub congas on a Latin tune I’d recorded at a live gig of mine at Iridium in NYC. The guy I chose, who happened to be the best conguero I auditioned turned out to be not only the former news reporter on the NYC classical radio station WQXR, but a Jew! He grew up in the Bronx and learned from all the Puerto Ricans like the more well-known Jewish pianist, composer, band leader Larry Harlow did on piano.[2]

Now this is in no way saying that Jews were the only white people responsible for the “white blues revival.” Of course the field was filled with seminal figures such as Alan Lomax, the Seegers, Harry Smith, John Hammonds Sr. and Jr., Charley Musselwhite, Bob Koester, Paul Oliver, Samuel Charters, Chris Strachwitz, Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, the Stones, Nick Gravenites, Koerner, Ray & Glover, Tom Rush, the Allman Brothers, Steve Miller, Alexis Korner, Alvin Lee, Taj Mahal, Nicky Hopkins, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, John Sebastian, Jack Bruce, Dave Van Ronk, Eric Von Schmidt, John Mayall, Jim Schwall, Roy Buchanan, Ry Cooder, Paul Butterfield, Elvin Bishop, Eric Burdon, etc.

Putting this into perspective, however, is a real eye-opener. In the heart of the “white blues revival,” circa 1964, Jews comprised less than 3% of the entire United States population! As is well known, the professions of lawyers, doctors, businessmen, scientists, classical music artists, intellectuals, Hollywood studio owners, producers and directors, (not to mention rabbis!) are Jewish, but why would this also include blues musicians, managers, producers, record companies, and promoters?

First, a little background as to what the “White Blues Revival” was. Blues music was created by black musicians in the south – primarily the Mississippi delta, but also throughout Louisiana, Texas, Georgia and Alabama in the 19^th century. No recordings were made until the early 20^th century, so the sound of the earliest blues is unknown. What is known is that it was derived from their African background in a syncretic process that also incorporated field hollers, church music, children’s songs, and various forms of white folk and popular music that was around them. But it was certainly the African element that provided it with its most distinct elements, both vocally and instrumentally.

As the 20^th century progressed, blacks began migrating north into Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, along the eastern seaboard, and eventually, in the 1940’s in a mass migration to find employment in the industrial cities of the north, predominantly Chicago. The most significant structural change in the music was the implementation of electric guitars and amplified harmonicas as well as the bass and drums. Occasionally horns were added as well.

Beginning in the 1930’s, the folklorist Alan Lomax and his father John began making field recordings of blues artists for the Library of Congress and the American Archive of Folk Song. Soon thereafter, Harry Smith and other musicologists began following suit and a valuable resource became available from which to access blues music that was previously unknown.

In the late 1950’s, white musicians such as Dave van Ronk in New York and Eric Von Schmidt in Connecticut and Cambridge began learning to play these songs and interpreting them in their own style. Both were tremendously influential in spreading these songs to other eager young white kids like Bob Dylan, Danny Kalb, Steve Katz, Stefan Grossman, Rory Block, Maria D’Amato,  John Sebastian and others in New York, and Geoff Muldaur, Tom Rush, Jim Kweskin, Mel Lyman and others in Cambridge.

Books on blues history and method books for playing it began being published by people like Paul Oliver, Sam Charters, Tony Glover, Stefan Grossman and Harold Courlander. News of this soulful black music spread by word of mouth and burgeoning folk and blues scenes began developing around North America, especially near colleges, such as Koerner, Ray and Glover’s blues circle near the University of Minnesota, one that included a teenage Bobby Zimmerman. White kids like Stefan Grossman, Dave van Ronk and Rory Block in New York sought out the blind Reverand Gary Davis to study with. John Sebastian did the same with Mississippi John Hurt as did Randy Wolfe (California) on the west coast, not to mention all the white kids learning from the older Chicago black musicians.

Very quickly, many of the eager wave of young white musicians also began incorporating electric instruments as the Chicago Blues artists did and just as you had acoustic black bluesmen like Robert Johnson, Son House and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and electric bluesmen like Elmore James, BB, Albert and Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin, you had white acoustic bluesmen like Dave van Ronk, Geoff Muldaur and Ian Buchanan, you had electric white bluesmen like Mike Bloomfield, Charlie Musselwhite and Paul Butterfield.

In addition, the white blues revival rapidly spread to England where it was embraced by artists like Alexis Koerner, Graham Bond, John Mayall, Eric Clapton and bands like the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Yardbirds. This was highly significant because the English bands were extremely popular in America which caused many Americans to investigate and discover the source of the Brits’ material, which was right there in the USA.

Getting back to the focal point of this essay, the question of why Jews, who comprised only about 3% of the population were so prominent in the white blues revival as not only musicians but journalists, recording company executives and engineers, concert promotors and club owners and managers, agents, musicologists and the like can be explained by the following factors that I believe contributed to this phenomenon:

Geographic Migration and Cultural Exchange: It is well known that enslaved blacks were brought to the American south to work in cotton fields and other agrarian enterprises, however less known is that in the 18^th century into the 19^th, the largest Jewish populations were in the south as well, in cities such as Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA. Both ethnicities migrated north to the urban areas such as Washington DC, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, New York and Chicago where industry and commerce were concentrated. Jobs and business opportunities were plentiful and cultural exchange flourished. Jews and blacks lived in close proximity and had a convenient access to each other’s music. Eric Herschthal wrote in The Jewish Week, “Close proximity lent itself to musical appropriation. And at the same time that Jews were reworking black music – in short, the history of Broadway, where Jewish songwriters riffed on black spirituals – black musicians began performing Jewish songs.”[3] The scholar Jonathan Karp noted that historically, Jews fulfilled the role of “middlemen and go-betweens.”

“In a culture where race was a core element in popular entertainment (particularly music), Jewish entrepreneurs, interpreters, critics and creators – ‘white but not quite’ – proved able to shift readily between the segregated realms.” They facilitated cultural synthesis “by presenting black music in a manner accessible to whites.”[4]

One of the primary and most important locations that facilitated the blues in its development was the Maxwell Street district of Chicago, that was nicknamed and referred to by the black bluesmen and others as “Jewtown.” It was the Midwestern equivalent of New York City’s lower east side in that in the 19^th century, it was a concentrated nexus of Jewish merchants and music. What made it unique, however, was that in the 1940’s, as blacks migrated north, it became a primary destination to meet and perform their music, often outside on sidewalks. In addition, due to the high density of merchants, shoppers and passerby, the musicians began purchasing amplifiers in which to plug in their guitars, harmonicas and microphones in order to be heard above the cacophonous  street noise. This electrification of their music became one of the essential elements of the Chicago Blues style.

One example that comes to mind is when (the Jewish) concert impresario Bill Graham, at the advice of (the Jewish) Mike Bloomfield, presented BB King at the Fillmore to a young, predominately white audience – the largest and arguably warmest that King had played for in his career. Will Klefner’s citation[5] of Ulrich Adelt’s account of the circumstances leading up to that event is as follows: “By the 1960s, King’s fame was dwindling, as his music was no longer reaching its intended audience. At the height of the Civil Rights movement, many members of the black community were more attracted to the open, direct discussion of black power in the soul music of artists like James Brown and Aretha Franklin. The lyrics to King’s songs reminded

these audiences of the past, a period they were trying to forget.  King often described the black community’s rejection of his music as “being black twice.”[6] King was disappointed that the black community did not accept the blues, an authentically African American form of music that “followed our path from slavery to freedom.”

In the late 1960s, (the Jewish) Sidney Seidenberg became King’s manager and aggressively pushed him into a variety of new venues that were presenting blues music to white audiences.  As a result, B.B. King found a receptive audience in the most unexpected of groups: white hippies. In February of 1967, Bill Graham booked B.B. King and his band to perform once again at the Fillmore Auditorium. Though in need of new fans, initially, King was hesitant to perform in front of a predominantly white audience. Graham, often described as having a personality that was a mixture between “Mother Theresa and Al Capone,” had a keen sense of getting what he wanted. Just before his performance at the Fillmore West, King expressed his doubts to Graham, stating that “this wasn’t the right place.” Graham assured him that it was, and King and his band prepped for the show that night.

In true Graham fashion, he went on stage to introduce B.B. King in a way King described as the “nicest and shortest introduction” he ever received.  Graham succinctly proclaimed, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the Chairman of the Board: B.B. King!” Upon the announcement, each member of the audience (about 3,000 in total) stood up and proceeded to give King a 45 minute[sic] standing ovation. Almost immediately, King found himself overwhelmed with emotion, and certainly a bit of confusion. Reflecting on his experience, King was touched by the appreciation his audience gave him, and he was simply unsure as to how to repay them for their support.  At the time of his death, King stated that his performance at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1967 changed the trajectory of his career.[7]

The Chess brothers recorded the great Chicago blues artists making their music available to the world. John Fishel helped organize the monumental Ann Arbor Blues Festival which was as important an event in the field of blues as Woodstock was in the field of rock. Its 3 day program featured a who’s who of living blues greats representing among others, the Mississippi delta, Texas, eastern seaboard, and of course Chicago. The music from the festival was recorded by John’s brother Jim and is commercially available. Dick Waterman represented Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Skip James and other delta blues legends as well as Chicago stars like Junior Wells. Dozens of more examples of Jews promoting blues artists through recordings, management, concerts, books, magazines, and rediscovery abound.

Mutual Discrimination: Both blacks and Jews suffered oppression and discrimination throughout history. Blues was born out of such suffering as a way of venting one’s feelings about not only persecution but troubles (and joys) with the opposite sex and alcohol. Jewish musicians identified with these issues and utilized it as a vehicle to express their own

experiences and emotions.  The fact that the Bible cites Jews as having been slaves in Egypt was certainly not lost on them when confronting the slavery imposed upon black people. In his essay, “The Lives People Live,” Julius Lester, a black Jewish scholar noted, “Throughout Western history blacks and Jews have been subjected to stereotyping by the white majority, and often, the same stereotypes have been applied to both peoples…..Both people have been physically segregated from the majority.

The word ghetto was first used to describe the section of Venice where Jews were segregated from gentiles in the sixteenth century…..Jews and blacks suffered forced separation from their homelands and were dispersed throughout the Western world. Many blacks today refer to themselves as living in the Diaspora, not recognizing, perhaps, that they are using a word from the Jewish experience to describe their own….. Both have been politically subjugated, with laws being passed restricting their movement in society, their choices of occupation, their social relationships….. Both groups have been subjected to heinous violence…… I can think of no two peoples who have endured so many of the same experiences throughout Western history.”[8] In an interview for Crawdaddy Magazine in 2009, Blues Project guitarist Danny Kalb told David MacFadden that “First off all the Blues Project was Jewish guys, but they also had the experience of the Holocaust. So they know how anything can happen to anybody.”[9] An interesting confluence of survival techniques was the “Jewish Vacation Guide: Hotels, Boarding and Rooming Houses Where Jews are Welcome” published by The Federation of Jewish Farmers in 1917 which inspired “The Negro Motorist Green Book” which was published from 1939 – 1960. Blacks experienced the same discrimination as Jews and these books helped both find safe havens to rest while traveling by car.

Educational Tradition: Jewish families have a strong tradition of education as well as cultural enrichment. When I was growing up, most of my friends’ homes had pianos and most kids took lessons. Most of us had to learn an instrument. Black families had a strong musical tradition rooted in Africa and transformed through their American experiences. This manifested itself in the church as well as in cross-cultural exchanges with white mountain and country musicians, Hispanic musicians, vaudeville, medicine show, parlor and pop musicians. In many interviews with jazz and blues artists, you’ll hear over and over how they were mentored by older black musicians in their community.  As part and parcel of the Jewish musical and intellectually curious nature, appreciating and learning blues was a perfect fit. This concept merits further elaboration.

Jews established a tradition of intellectual curiosity for millennia in analyzing meanings in the Biblical stories, culminating in the Talmud, in which various laws are vigorously debated and diverse opinions of highly learned rabbis are expressed . Examining such texts throughout the centuries cultivated a strong ethnic disposition of creative, critical thinking. Baruch Spinoza challenged the divine origin of the Hebrew Bible, the nature of God, and the earthly power

wielded by religious authorities, Jewish and Christian alike at a time when it was not only assumed that the God as expressed in the Bible existed but it was blasphemous to even suggest otherwise.

While other ethnic cultures tended to point their children in the direction of the trades like plumbing, construction, mechanics, sports or agrarian pursuits, Jewish parents emphasized intellectual pursuits such as medicine, law, commerce, and cultural participation and appreciation. Henceforth, although Jews made up a miniscule percentage of the world population, they contributed a vastly inordinate amount of achievements that radically furthered civilization – the way we think, what we know about reality, medicine, science, politics, how we enjoy art, poetry, literature, music, theater, film, dance and philosophy. Of the miniscule Jewish population in the world, roughly 0.2%, an astounding 22% of Nobel Prize winners were Jews! Aside from Nobel Prize winners, Jews who have contributed remarkable achievements to human civilization literally cascade off the page, like Freud, Adler, Rank, Fromm, Reich, Einstein, Salk, Sabin, Marx, Oppenheimer, Feynman, Buber, Sagan, Levi-Strauss, Hershkovits, Brandeis, Arendt, Cardozo, Derrida, Bloom, Rothko, Gottlieb, Soutine, Modigliani, Mendelsohn, Mahler, Schoenberg, Bernstein, Heifetz, Horowitz, Rubenstein, Perlman, Serkin, Dylan, Gershwin, Isaiah and Irving Berlin, Jerome Robbins, Weisel, Henry, Joseph and Philip Roth, Bellow, Mailer, Ginsberg, Babel, Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Three Stooges, most of Hollywood, etc.

Social Activism and Civil Rights: Many Jews were highly active in the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, in fact some such as Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner gave their lives for the cause. Surprisingly enough, the NAACP was founded by the white William English Walling and his Jewish wife, Anna Strunsky along with such Jews as Henry Moscowitz, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsh and Stephen Wise, and funded by, amongst others, Jacob Schiff, Julius Rosenwald and Herbert Lehman. Other Jewish civil rights activists include rabbis Israel Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Arthur Lelyveld, who was beaten by racists in the south. Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and other Jewish folk singers (along with many gentile ones) sang at civil rights events in the south. As a matter of fact, Dylan received the Tom Paine award in 1963 from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. The Workmen’s Circle (now known as the Worker’s Circle), formed in 1900 is a Jewish group whose mission, in addition to preserving Yiddish culture, is to promote social justice. In 1937, the Jewish poet and lyricist Abe Meeropol under the pseudonym Lewis Allen wrote a poem about the lynching of blacks that two years later he gave to Billie Holliday to sing under the title, “Strange Fruit.” The song has been called “a declaration” and “the beginning of the civil rights movement.” Holliday sang it at The Café Society in Greenwich Village in 1939, which was the first integrated nightclub, a policy created by the Jewish Barney Josephson. The Jewish Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter of the Rothschild family was an important patroness to the most important jazz figures of the bebop era like Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk, supporting them financially and even spending time in prison with them. She even paid for some of their funerals.

One political theory that is predicated on social justice is socialism. Then there has been a significant sector of Jews who espouse socialism. Since Jews have historically faced discrimination and persecution in many societies, it had led some to see socialism as a means of combating oppression and achieving equality for all people, regardless of their background. Figures like Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, and Emma Goldman were influential socialist thinkers and activists of Jewish descent. Jewish immigrants played a significant role in the labor movement where they were involved in organizing unions and advocating for workers’ rights. Many of these movements had socialist or leftist ideologies. Since blacks were also discriminated against, and trended toward the lower end of the socio-economic scale, many Jews advocated for their rights and equal opportunities. Lastly, in keeping with common principles and other factors as previously discussed, it is important to note that both Jews and blacks traditionally vote the same way – consistently Democratic.

Musical Appreciation: As previously mentioned, many Jewish parents encouraged their children to take music lessons and exposed them to as much culture as possible, be it via television or live concerts. The emotional depth and expressive nature of the blues would be a natural fit for them to be drawn to. In addition, musicians value quality in music over what race a person is who’s playing it. Black band leaders from Miles Davis to Charlie Parker to Muddy Waters and James Cotton hired white musicians while white band leaders such as Benny Goodman, Mezz Mezzrow, Paul Butterfield and Corky Siegel hired black musicians. A couple of examples come to mind: In his autobiography “Stopping Time,” the bluesy jazz pianist Paul Bley who was adopted and raised Jewish in Canada, first got interested while studying for his bar mitzvah. The soulful voice of the cantor really connected with him and caused him to begin studying piano in earnest and connecting with black musicians to deepen his education.[10] Likewise, the journalist Michael Goldfarb recorded an elderly cantor singing “an impassioned Kaddish” at a ceremony marking the 50^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland.[11] Soon thereafter, he heard a 1932 recording of Mississippi Delta bluesman Skip James singing and the soulfulness expressed in both made a significant connection in Goldfarb’s mind.

In my own experience, and certainly that of many others, the pop and rock musicians I admired wrote about who their influences were, and the trail always seemed to lead back to the black bluesmen like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Elmore James and Howlin’ Wolf. White blues-rock heroes of ours such as John Mayall, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Eric Burdon, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Canned Heat, John Sebastian and the like all humbly deferred their hero worship to the aforementioned older black blues musicians. One only needed to connect the dots and further investigate their influences and then immerse oneself in their culture. As a matter of fact, that’s how the Rolling Stones got started. Keith Richards first met Mick Jagger who was holding a blues record and the two immediately connected and started interpreting that music through their own expression. I became lifelong friends with a classmate sitting in front of me in a high school study hall when we started chatting and I found out he was a guitarist and his musical taste included BB King and Otis Rush. As a matter of fact, I immediately wanted to hear him play and he soon joined our band.

Looking at all the aforementioned reasons that so many Jews either chose to become blues musicians or engage and promote blues musicians by way of discovery, representation, promotion, scholarship, journalism, recording, presenting in concerts, one can only conclude from the phenomenological data that the connection is valid, not only for blues but for  the full spectrum of black music. The most famous traditional jazz venue in the birthplace of jazz – New Orleans called Preservation Hall began in the 1950’s as an art gallery owned by a Jew named Larry Borenstein. A Jewish couple, Allan and Sandra Jaffe bought the building from him and turned it into a mecca for traditional jazz, that exists to this day. And speaking of the birth of jazz, Louis Armstrong, arguably the most important figure of his time lived with a Jewish family named the Karnofskys who not only employed him but also loaned him the money to buy his first trumpet. Morris Karnofsky urged the young Louis to pursue music because he truly believed in the child’s talent. Armstrong wore a Jewish star around his neck thereafter.

Many of the big hits for black performers in the late 50’s and 60’s were written by Jewish youngsters like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond, Bert Bacharach, etc. who churned out hits in the Brill Building in Manhattan.  Folk and jazz clubs, many of which were owned by Jews provided the most prominent venues for the world to experience the greatest black musicians of their time like John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus. The Ash Grove in LA, owned by Ed Pearl booked blues artists like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mance Lipscomb, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Shines, Bukka White and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

It is indisputable that black and Jewish culture were inextricably connected. In addition to the many aforementioned commonalities, Jews greatly facilitated the rise in cultural acceptance and equal rights of blacks, and in turn, the significant cultural contributions initiated by blacks greatly influenced Jews as well as the general populace of North America and globally. Yet the only constant is change and as far back as the 1960’s, as mentioned in the BB King story, blacks were turning away from blues music in favor of slicker commercial R&B and Motown, as well as even white rock n’ roll. Any black music that was in commercial vein became grouped under the category of “soul music.” Blues was looked down upon as old fashioned and a remnant of slavery times. The 1970’s ushered in funk and eventually rap and hip hop music.

As the “white blues revival,” which started in the late 1950’s took a strong hold in the ‘60’s and blues became the roots of great rock n’ roll music, the majority of talented blues musicians were white and disproportionately Jewish. Muddy Waters and Brownie McGhee co-authored a song that Muddy sang called “Blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll.” While some younger black musicians like Robert Cray and Gary Clark Jr. carried on the tradition, most were white. Go to funky dive bars and clubs all around the USA and you’ll find mostly white musicians from their 20’s to their 80’s playing the blues. After the real heyday of the white blues revival where incredibly innovative musicians like Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Mike Bloomfield, Peter Green, Johnny Winter, Harvey Mandel, Jeff Beck and Glenn Schwartz, Al Kooper, Danny Kalb, Nicky Hopkins, Mark Naftalin and Barry Goldberg roamed the earth, the majority of “soul survivors” in the 21^st century, like at the Chicago Blues Reunion concert I attended at BB King’s in Times Square were old Jewish guys, many of whom were and are older than the old black blues heroes they studied and genuflected to like Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Sonny Terry and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

The blues is still very much alive and thriving, although unlike the revival period of the 1960’s, it’s since turned into a genre running on cruise control. The black patriots are nearly all gone and of their heirs, the brilliant innovators like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter and Mike Bloomfield, most are also gone. Of the subsequent blues musicians, some virtuosos have emerged, yet none with the innovative stylistic verve and greatness of the aforementioned ones. The only real advancement of the genre has been provided by the players with a knowledge of jazz who could expand the style through harmonic complexity. Yet many blues musicians are actively performing and recording in clubs and bars and for the few famous ones like Joe Bonamassa, in theaters and larger venues. Granted, most of the active blues fans and players are older but younger folks are still attracted to the music. An expansive library of books on the blues and on individual musicians is available and continually growing as are blues magazines such as Living Blues, Blues Blast, Blues Matters, Rhythm and Blues, Back to the Roots, Bluesnews, Blues N Rhythm, and Blues Bytes.

When I caught the blues bug at the ripe old age of 16, I had absolutely no cognition of what circumstances led me to be so attracted to this music other than the fact that if Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan and John Mayall enthusiastically recommended them, they must be worth checking out. From the white blues guys like Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Barry Goldberg, Corky Siegel, Al Kooper and Havey Mandel, I dug deeply into Little Walter, Walter Shakey Horton, Otis Spann, Junior Wells, James Cotton, Memphis Slim, Sleepy John Estes, Skip James, Buddy Guy. Charlie Patton and everyone else in the blues genre. All I knew is that the music deeply touched me – the voices, the instruments and the words. I studied the music (instead of my schoolwork!), learned to play instruments, played in a blues band, got to meet, jam with and play for some of these legendary artists, and wrote a thesis on the history of the blues.

How this connection came about for a Jewish upper middle class teenager, I can’t tell you. I was certainly not conscious of any of the points discussed in this essay, or even particularly aware of my Jewish identity, other than the unfortunate fact that I was forced to go to Hebrew School after regular school and eventually get bar mitzvahed. But the blues connection was real, and 56 years later, after delving into many other styles of music from jazz to country, to folk, to classical to Brazilian and Indian, the root of it all for me in my heart and soul remains the blues, and the same appears to be true for the old crew of Jewish friends that I’m still in contact with from my high school days. Despite my not having been particularly conscious in any way of my Jewish identity or of the history of my people having anything to do with my love of the blues, perhaps it was, in the final analysis, more than mere coincidence.